“I wouldn’t know,” I reply hotly. “I’ve never met him. My mother was a pagan, taken by Woodsmen when I was ten years old. My father was a Yehuli tax collector.”
“The kingdom doesn’t collect tax from Keszi.”
“Not anymore.” Not money, anyway, since his father landed on the strategy of stealing wolf-girls. “But there used to be Yehuli tax collectors sent along with a Woodsman convoy. That’s how he met my mother.”
Gáspár frowns at me. I shouldn’t care whether he thinks I’m lying, but with a bit of my own stubborn petulance I shift the dagger to my right hand and reach into my pocket with my left. I hold the gold coin out to him with slick, shaking fingers, thumb brushing over its engraved surface. There are Yehuli letters printed on it, but I can’t read them.
“My father minted that coin himself,” I say. “It was a gift to my mother, and she gave it to me before your father’s men dragged her to her death.”
Gáspár inspects the coin with great interest, the furrow in his brow smoothing. His lips part slightly, and for a moment I can believe he’s only a young man, not the black prince or a Woodsman killer. He looks up. “This coin was minted in Király Szek. Do you know your father’s name?”
“Zsigmond,” I reply. “Zsidó Zsigmond.” It’s one of the only things I do know about him. My mother rarely spoke of him, and when she did, it was only in a hushed, shameful whisper. The Yehuli do not worship the Prinkepatrios, but they are better loved by the king than the pagans are, and therefore almost as distasteful to those in Keszi. That the king employs them as tax collectors and financiers and merchants, the sorts of jobs that Patritians consider sinful, only deepens that loathing.
In the eyes of the pagans, the Yehuli are traitors, slaves to the Patritian tyrants, and willing ones at that. Katalin’s words ribbon through my head, years and years of bitten slurs.
Your blood is tainted, that’s why you’re barren.
Isten would never bless Yehuli scum.
You were born to lick the Woodsmen’s boots.
I feel a sudden flush of shame, and quickly tuck the coin back in my pocket. I’ve never shown it to anyone before, and I’m not sure why I’ve shown this Woodsman now.
I expect Gáspár to say something derisive about the Yehuli, too, or ask why I bothered holding on to the coin for all these years. But instead he looks at me with a queer scrutiny. “And you’re a fair hunter?”
“A great one,” I correct, smug, until I understand why he’s interested in my hunting skills at all. “But I’m not coming with you. I’d rather be eaten alive in Ezer Szem than freeze to death in the Far North.”
“If you don’t come, I’ll have no choice but to take you to Király Szek,” he says. “And you can explain to the king why your old woman tried to deceive him. I’ll warn you, he doesn’t take kindly to pagan tricks.”
“Only to our magic,” I return bitterly, but my heart is pounding. “You wouldn’t dare show up at the capital with your whole party dead and only a useless wolf-girl in tow. The king would be furious, and how will you explain that?”
“I can’t,” he admits. “In that case, then, you’ll have to hope that his anger at me outweighs his contempt for the pagans of Keszi.” Gáspár’s voice is even, and I can tell it’s more of his courtly rhetoric, every word as smooth as river stones. “He wouldn’t have to turn your village to ash to make his point. Just a few calculated kills—perhaps the old woman of yours? You said it yourself, she’s too frail to be of use to him.”
The rage I feel at his words is stitched through with confusion. For so many years I’ve cursed Virág for her lashings, loathed Katalin for her relentless cruelty, loved no one in Keszi except Boróka. But I’m not proud of my hatred. After all, if I don’t belong with the pagans, I’m not certain I belong anywhere.
My hand moves from the coin to my mother’s braid, shuddering with anger.
“Or I could just run away,” I say, defiant. I consider the knife in my grip again, and how it might feel meeting some soft, vulnerable part of him: the fleshy crook of his knee, the inside of his thigh. Somewhere painful but not fatal—a wound that would keep him from hungering after me.
“Then you’d seal the fate of your village for sure.” Gáspár lets out a breath, running a hand through his dark curls. Mussed like that, he looks less like a Woodsman, and nothing at all like a prince. “Besides, if you care even a twitch for your father’s people, you should be more eager to keep the king in power. There are others in Király Szek who pose a threat to the Yehuli.”